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LightWave Preset Scene * for building

so how can you help ?
we have reduced the frame size and sampling to reduce render times 1-2 mins * the frame size is 1200 x 600 which displays perfect in the new site.

if you could kindly grab the scene create a preset & f9 that bad boy and link it here we can quickly create a decent preset browser / database.

notes about the scene:

regarding the scene , scale is an issue so you may want to use nodes , also feel free to update the background image as long as the main variables stay the same ie lighting, camera position & model... cooliest background made will be made the default ... it's WIP and a long road but I suppose it's a start and lets not forget Preset Central ....

Good, it's a start. I've looked over the scene and I think for this to be useful all the surfaces (not talking about the sample surface) have to be set up correctly to be energy conserving with proper refection models. Also there is no need for the distant light in the scene with Ambient intensity set to 5. (Also turn off Lens flares, shadow maps and volumetric lights in the render globals, but turn on raytrace transparency and raytrace refraction.

As a side note I also think that Preset Central need to divide its surface presets between Energy conserving and non energy conserving, perhaps just call it Photo-real and non photo-real. It's too much of a mystery box at the moment and potentially time wasting to grab a surface that looks okay in the image only to find that it isn't set up as a realistic surface.

EDIT- I just realised that this is independant of Preset Central, good, then your Lightwiki browser should attempt to categorize the presets btween photoreal and non photoreal. That would be very useful.

Good, it's a start. I've looked over the scene and I think for this to be useful all the surfaces (not talking about the sample surface) have to be set up correctly to be energy conserving with proper refection models. Also there is no need for the distant light in the scene with Ambient intensity set to 5. (Also turn off Lens flares, shadow maps and volumetric lights in the render globals, but turn on raytrace transparency and raytrace refraction.

As a side note I also think that Preset Central need to divide its surface presets between Energy conserving and non energy conserving, perhaps just call it Photo-real and non photo-real. It's too much of a mystery box at the moment and potentially time wasting to grab a surface that looks okay in the image only to find that it isn't set up as a realistic surface.

EDIT- I just realised that this is independant of Preset Central, good, then your Lightwiki browser should attempt to categorize the presets btween photoreal and non photoreal. That would be very useful.

cool and noted! hopefully we can get a final scene setup soon and re_share and getting everything tidied up , some guys are tweaking the scene atm

I took the scene and changed all the surfaces to be energy conserving, no specular only reflection. I killed the Distant light that wasn't doing anything and turned raytrace transparency and refraction back on. Here is the altered version (just scene and object, you need to use with the original image files of course).

I took the scene and changed all the surfaces to be energy conserving, no specular only reflection. I killed the Distant light that wasn't doing anything and turned raytrace transparency and refraction back on. Here is the altered version (just scene and object, you need to use with the original image files of course).

I believe it needs to be this way if we want to judge the material as realistically as possible. Otherwise we are just being fooled by nice images.

I've started using the scene to make surfaces and it is a good place to work.

I was also thinking that this set up could ship with an outdoor EXR backdrop, so that the user can swap between the studio setup and an exterior set up.

Also, we could have a scaled up version, the ball being about a meter in size, the grid pattern up-scaled, because some surfaces need to be judged at larger scale.

wicked DJ thanks and I agree with yourself , tbh I am not the best at render nor surfacing actually LW in general so I am more than happy to hear people thoughts and suggestions , we will keep revising until the middle ground is covered and people are happy with the scene .

Note I have removed all other version from the dropbox account so links above will die

New Version corrected by DJ , I also quickly uv mapped the preset however it's a bit messy and could do with a proper texture artist correcting it.

Would it be wise/helpful to nail down some sort of naming convention for preset files/zip files? Maybe including colour, texture, indoor/external , version, author initials. E.g. wood_lightbrown_higloss_interior_v1_rl.pst

for the moment I'm just throwing them all in a big folder , but eventually they will need categorized however you can add a description inside layout SETNAME *which kinda helps* still need to work a lot of the logistics also want to grab Ben from preset central and see if we can come up with a plan and standardize the defaults.

Re DJ , would it be easier to have two scene for outdoor environments or just switching them off in the texture panel ?

For me it would be easier to just go into the Background Options and find that there are two Texture Environments loaded with say the studio one check on by default. If you want to switch to Exterior mode you just uncheck it and check the other one. Unfortunately these can't be labeled (Studio/Outdoors), so the user would have to be in the know about this.

But that would be more convenient than loading another scene I would think.

By the way, is it possible to put a custom image into the preset shelf, often the nodal surface preview ball look nothing like the rendered result. It's not that important but I thought I'd ask. I've only just worked out how you save presets as pst and get them into a folder.

By the way, is it possible to put a custom image into the preset shelf, often the nodal surface preview ball look nothing like the rendered result. It's not that important but I thought I'd ask. I've only just worked out how you save presets as pst and get them into a folder.

not that I am aware of , but I get what you mean they look a little hmm *Flat* the only way I can think of a workaround is via L-Script which I suck at or I can quickly knock up some html gallery/browser which can be added to the zip